Nuggets C Timofey Mozgov makes Ivan Drago sound like Yakov Smirnoff

Timofey Mozgov, who some Nuggets call “Ivan Drago,” is battling JaVale McGee (and Kosta Koufos) for playing time. So I asked Mozgov something about friendly competition at practice. And he Ivan Dragoed me, speaking in his chilling, deep Russian tone:

Mozgov was injured often last season. Other times, he looked pretty non-Drago-like out there, getting pushed around. But Mozgov had a couple breakout games in the Olympics for Russia, which won the bronze.

“The Olympics felt so good, you just have to be there to feel the spirit,” Mozgov said. “It just made me feel stronger and feel more mature.”

As for his rotation, Karl said that he will likely go 10-deep.

“Everybody’s going to have to play, it’s who plays with who well,” he said. “The most intriguing thing is how we finish. That’s what I don’t know right now – how we’re going to finish. Who’s going to start? That’s easy. I can mess around with that. I think we’ll keep everybody in a positive place, but how we finish is to be determined. That’s where people will get angry more. If you’re going to play 30 minutes, it’s better coming off the bench because you get 20 minutes against the second-line guys. No one wants to understand that.”

Since I’ll never get a chance to share this video again, here’s Ivan Drago actor Dolph Lundgren performing the weirdest (and awesomest) version of an Elvis song ever. Force yourself to watch the whole thing. It gets better as it goes on, and when I say better, I mean more ridiculous, and when I mean more ridiculous, I mean watch the part when he does karate.

Oh, and as for Yakov Smirnoff, here are my favorite jokes of his, about Cleveland – fast forward to 2:26 please.